


The Most Daring Prophecies - Dr Jane Foster at TED Talk

by Rozilla



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Awesome Jane Foster, F/M, Gen, Jane Foster Loves Science, Lectures, TED Talk, Women Being Awesome, mcu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 09:43:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4299996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rozilla/pseuds/Rozilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A transcript of Jane giving a TED Talk on her experiences of crossing the cosmos, Asgard and her hopes for the future of interstellar travel - as reported on WHIH. </p><p>(Or, the author, a certified Jane-stan, saw this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ3es8ABb3k) and freaked the fuck out with the need to write this).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Daring Prophecies - Dr Jane Foster at TED Talk

**Author's Note:**

> That video made me ridiculously happy. I spent about four hours writing this on and off. I HAD TO GET THIS OUT OF MY SYSTEM.  
> The video says she's lecturing, but didn't state where, so I decided to go for TED Talk, because it'd be a real coup for them and it'd be widely accessible.

_This is a transcript of the extended lecture given by Doctor Jane Foster at TED talk, the video is available here_  
  
Hello, thank you all for coming, and I am honoured to be asked to give this lecture, if incredibly nervous.  
[scattered laughter]  
I want to begin with something of a disclaimer- as most of you are aware, I am not a cultural anthropologist, but a lot of what I am about to tell you is intrinsically linked to my experience with another culture; an alien one in fact. One that is far far more technologically advanced than ours and one that could potentially hold the key to our own advancements in interstellar travel as well as… pretty much everything else. But I must remind everyone here; these are only my experiences. As I say, I am no anthropologist, so I am working purely on my own perspective, but I can talk about the technological and scientific aspects of Asgard and what it will potentially mean for us technologically. These will have effects on our own worldview, we’re already seeing them. Will it be positive or negative? I like to think  the former, but even with the positives, it will still have a knock-on effect that could mean painful and potentially dangerous change.  
  
What I do believe is that we must brave this, for the good of our entire species. What I am about to share is incredible, amazing and awe-inspiring, but it comes in the wake of great loss and sacrifice on the part of many worlds, ours as well. Those who were lost in the wake of New York, the losses on Asgard to, cannot be forgotten or ignored, and must be remembered and mourned. We saw the march of progress in the field of robotics and alien artefacts came with devastating consequences for Sokovia, Johannesburg and Seoul. The SHIELD files leaked in the wake of Washington reveal a lot of our past mistakes and the losses they made, but they also speak of the amazing feats of successes, bravery and heroism. This has been going on for, as it turns out, centuries, even millennia, the difference is that now we have a fact based, empirical understanding that our ancestors did not have. We’re on the precipice of something arguably terrifying, but we are beyond shutting ourselves off. We can’t go back. We can’t deny it any longer. These are truly strange times, but in a way, they’ve always been strange; we’re just now in a position to appreciate it and to try and understand it.  
  
So, with that done, I’ll start with… a rather self-aggrandizing anecdote. Sorry.  
[scattered laughter]  
When I was a baby, my parents talked about my future and tried to predict who’s footsteps I’d follow in. My Dad was a cosmologist and he declared I’d go into some space related physics like he did, but my Mom- a forensic and cultural anthropologist, as well as a historian- argued that I could just as likely join her field. After some back and forth, my Mom threw her hands up and declared, ‘Well, why not let her do both!’  
‘She can’t do both! How can you mix cultural stuff and space?’  
‘I don’t know, but I’m sure she’ll think of something!’  
To which my Dad replied, in typically spurious Foster fashion, ‘So you’re saying she’ll discover an ancient alien civilisation then!’  
[growing laughter and applause]  
And my Mom just shrugged and said ‘Hey, what ever makes her happy!’  
[laughter and whistling]  
My Dad was… kinda right. The thing is, I did not discover Asgard. I visited it, sure, but it was not so much discovered as… presented. Over a thousand years ago, the Earth was threatened by Frost Giants, otherwise known as Jotuns, from one of the Nine Realms, who attempted to conquer our world as their own due to their belief that they owned it by right. They used weapons based in what they would have called magic, but we now understand them as alien powers, some of which have emerged in humans apparently naturally. Back then, ancient societies, like the Vikings, saw this insanely advanced technology, these creatures, these aliens, and interpreted them as gods. You can hardly blame them either. Arthur C Clarke’s third law applies here; ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Even as we are now, arguably Asgard’s technology might as well be magic to us- but that will change in the future as we progress and become more advanced ourselves. I’m not sure we will ever catch up to Asgard, in the same way you will always be younger than your parents or older siblings, but we can learn from them and, who knows, we may surprise ourselves.  
The first thing we can learn from them is thankfully relevant to my area of expertise; my passion since childhood and a dream of humanity since before the space age- faster than light, interstellar travel to other parts of the universe…. or, as it maybe; the multiverse.  
[pause]  
This first slide here [looks up] is a diagram, a rough approximation and based on some ancient artwork and updated with what I and Dr Selvig have learned from the Convergence- the events of Greenwich two years ago. We have learned that there are, indeed, Nine Realms. Each exists within it’s own galaxy in separate places in the universe. Midgard, is us- but the ‘Realm’ includes our Solar System, the Milky Way, our entire galaxy. Each Realm is a ‘system’ rather than  a single planet or planetoid in some cases and Asgardians have been able to travel between them by means of the Bifrost- an artificially created Einstein Rosen Bridge, or, more popularly known… as a wormhole. This provides a bridge across the gulf of space, traversing light years in a matter of minutes. At first, I thought it might make it’s own pathways and carve them out as it goes, but as it turns out, it actually makes use of the natural pathways that already exist all around us. This links to my initial research into manifestations of subtle aroras- they were a signature left behind by the Bifrost- a trail of breadcrumbs leading back into Yggdrasil. It explains why certain Subatomic particles, like the neutrino are able to access and traverse dimensions in seconds. We have facilities all over the world from the Super-Kamioka to the Hadron Collider, to detect subatomic particles that we now know, for certain, can potentially allow for interspace and dimensional travel. We know because Asgard has done it since before our ancestors had even formed basic agriculture.  
[gasps and murmuring]  
I am not even kidding. What I am about to show you… I took this picture with a digital camera, with express permission of the Elders who work there and approval by the High Council of Asgard, including Thor’s  
[lone whoo! from the audience followed by scattered applause]  
Thank you.  
[laughter]  
Including Thor’s father; the King of Asgard.  
[gasps]  
Yeah. He’s royalty… so… no pressure.  
[Jane laughs, scattered audience laughter]  
So, yeah, this is a picture of the Hall of Science, a place of study, observance and, a kind of reverence for the Nine Realms. I’ve stood in it and I gotta say… I’m not especially religious, but I definitely felt something… I dunno, spiritual? For want of a better term, when standing there.  It’s gorgeous…uh... I’ll get it up on the projector…  
[pause, then the slide is changes and the audience gasps and murmurs]  
This picture does not do it justice at all. It’s about a fifty feet tall and constantly moving. This... is Yggdrasil. Well, not literally, but it’s a… hard light projection, a very fluid and organic looking one compared to what we see on Earth. It works in a similar way a lot of high end tech companies use hard light holograms to create simulations and pretty much run anything now... I guess… um… it’s a way of observing the movements of the Realms, including ours, and you’ll notice that we, Midgard, as they call us, are in the middle. Midgard literally translates as Middle Earth, as you may well know. I’ve been assured that Lord of The Rings is not real, by the way.  
[laughter and a few groans]  
Anyway, the silvery-gold trails, branches coming off the main trunk if you will, you see are representations of those natural pathways I discussed earlier, paths that are currently accessible by the Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge.  
The big question is; will they ever be accessible to us? I would say yes, some day, but unless something truly drastic happens in the near future, which… y’know, to be fair, seems to happen every six months or so-  
[laughter]  
the major thing that’s stopping us accessing these pathways is a lack of sufficient power. Even if something like cold fusion were possible, it would still not generate nearly enough consistent energy to open a pathway. In New York… Loki was able to use an artifact called the Tesseract, which provided not only the energy, in abundance, but also could actually access subatomic space and open a portal. Having travelled the Bifrost myself, I would still argue that portal is probably our best bet for interspace travel, if only to potentially allow us to see where we’re going. The Bifrost is rather dependent on these pathways, though once these pathways are accessed the actual business of aiming is a lot easier- which is why the Bifrost is able to land it’s traveller pretty much anywhere on Earth, even though it uses the same paths on Yggdrasil. It leaves the traces behind, as I said and it’s these that I studied across the world during my Phd and… it’s through this study that… I found Thor, a somewhat more… convincing argument for the existence of alien worlds.  
[laughter and scattered applause]  
Now, at this point, I should clarify- the Asgardians do not believe that there is a literal tree, not like the ones that grow on Earth or, indeed, other Realms, but it is simply a… metaphor based on it’s resemblance to a tree. I want to clarify this because the Vikings who worshiped them did think there was a literal tree so… there would naturally be confusion so… yeah... This model, based on outside observance and passed down through mages and elders in Asgard is a way of describing the outer structure of the cosmos… a structure we did not know about until the Convergence. The worlds, as Dr Selvig has mentioned, and Thor explained to me… [cough] sorry, the Realms, travel around a central point like we do around the sun, and every so often, around every five thousand years, they align. This behaviour is not particularly tree like I’ll grant you, but it works for the most part. The central path, the trunk- sorry, can I go back? Back to the diagram? Thank you- the ‘trunk’, is, in fact, a main pathway. It is not one accessible by the Bifrost, no should it be, according to the elders I spoke to. They theorise that to access this central path is potentially catastrophic, like drilling into an actual literal trunk, and it could threaten to topple the tree itself… so… yeah, that bad. Potentially universe ending… which… yeah. So let’s not try that shall we?  
[nervous laughter]  
Speaking of literal trees, the ancient Vikings interpreted this rather literally in their cosmology and, why wouldn’t they? Turns out they were not far off. They were able to create some pretty amazing navigational tools, such as sunstones and primitive compasses, and were able to sail as far afield as America. I, along with a some specialised Historians and… shall we say, some primary sources…  
[knowing laughter]  
...have lead me to believe that these were made after some helpful hints from Asgard. They also used stars to navigate and, I have a theory that they might have tried to pinpoint where Asgard actually was in our night’s sky. Some scrolls have recently been uncovered in Hernam, Norway that may suggest a link between their understanding of what we know to be a kind of cosmology, and their navigation techniques. They used natural phenomena like the movements of whales, seals, dolphins and the like when the sky was cloudy, but the rest of the time, they relied on… the Gods  
[laughter]  
… to show them the way.  
So, a big question we have to ask ourselves, even in our supposedly secular times is this; are they Gods?  
[pause]  
Honestly? No. I say this with some authority on the matter. They are not deities and, I know for certain, that they would agree. They are alien, they are powerful and are advanced, but they age and die just like we do, albeit at a much slower rate. They are a society with a culture and history, in many ways not much different from ours.  
On the other hand, it’s hard not to agree, that since they are so much more physically powerful, stronger than us, even the ordinary citizens, let alone its magic users and warriors like Thor, and so much more long lived than us, they might as well be… God-like.  
[some pauses and murmuring]  
Though it’s hard to worship any supposed God that takes up all the room on your couch and steals the remote to watch action movies on Netflix.  
[laughter and applause]  
I’ve watched all the Die Hard movies so many times….  
[more laughter]  
Kinda bored of them by now… I know, it’s not supposed to be possible…. but hey…  
[Jane laughs]  
So… yeah. Sorry, got side tracked.    
I ought to elaborate on a hypothetical scenario- what would we need, aside from the power source, to achieve a similar form of travel? Um, I would suggest that a portal would mean we could investigate what we would need to navigate any potential new worlds we might uncover. We have to appreciate that we might find civilisations like ours, or Asgard’s, but we are just as likely to find inhospitable planets or… indeed, something like the Chitauri. We have only scratched the surface of what’s out there… we are pretty vulnerable and we need to be cautious about how we proceed from here on out. If a portal is not achievable, then our own version of the Bifrost would have to include some sort of protective vessel. I had to hold onto Thor to travel the Bifrost and, I gotta say, it was like being in a combination of a wind tunnel, a sparkly rainbow water slide and a g-force simulator; fun, but not something I would do without… well, something solid to hold onto.  
[laughter and a few whistles]  
Asgardian physical durability means that they can travel the Bifrost without any sort of protection, the Vanir and many other species that live in the Nine Realms also seem to be able to use it without trouble. We are not so lucky, sadly.  
[scattered laughter]  
So it’s a pretty safe bet, baring any helping hands we may get in the future from places like Wakanda or even, ahem, further afield, we could see these developments in the next forty years. In the mean time, there’s always… your’s truly and what I can tell you about it. Which is… better than nothing I guess.  
[pause]  
I’d like to segue into what I found when visiting Asgard and I want to give you some insight into what I experience there as it may well be that any excursion in interspace and dimensional travel could mean we encounter other cultures. What I found in Asgard was both extraordinary and… kinda familiar, in it’s own way. What I’m about to tell you has been vetted, again, by Thor’s father and many other authorities on Asgard and I asked Thor to read it to and give his input, but he said he trusts my judgement on this. Which is… interesting… So, here we go.  
[pause as slide is changed to panoramic landscape of Asgard - gasps from the audience]  
This is the view from where I stayed at the Central Citadel on Asgard. As you can see, the architecture is… nothing short of stunning and seems kinda impossible. I discovered that most of what this city is built of is beyond any materials found in our world and places like the Moving Tower, this one here, are power by a kind of magnetic propulsion which makes Tony Stark’s armour look… like a toy helicopter.  
[chorus of ‘ooohhhs’]  
He’d agree if he saw it, trust me… I have more examples of magnetic propulsion to follow later, but this tower is largely a work of decorative art, though it also is meant to be a symbol of the Nine Realms in their chaos state… The scholars on Asgard believe that the world existed in flux before they fell into the orbit of Yggdrasill, much like the rocks and matter that formed our planets in the aftermath of the Big Bang. Incidentally, when I told them about the Big Bang, they looked at me like I was a child telling their parents the moon was made of cheese…  
[a few gasps and silence]  
Well, different perspective I guess. We have a lot to teach each other… more on that later to… hopefully.  
[change of slides]  
These are different shots I took of Asgard, the interiors of the palace, the market square… it’s all pretty medieval, in the very loose, Ren Fair sense of the word, and I have been told that it’s likely that they influenced us in our dress sense more than the other way around.  
It is a city-state, a sovereignty, ruled by the All-father. He is largely in charge but seeks counsel and advisement from a council of experts and leaders. The leadership is determined by succession, but it has been several thousand years since there was a handover of power. Generally the All-father hands over personally, rather than the tradition we have in parts of our world where the King usually has to die in order to pass on the rule. Since Asgardians are so long lived, this often means that this practice would be impractical so… usually a King will step down and pass down the Throne, Hlidskialf- apologies for pronunciation, still working on it- usually to the first born child. Asgard has had Queens in the past, so it could pass onto a daughter if they were first born.  
The stories concerning their exploits in the Poetic Edda are largely… false, over elaborated or even misinterpreted. It’s not hard to see why; we have a primitive society interpreting an alien one as Gods and then their folk tales being re-re-interpreted by a thirteenth century scholar, who may have embellished them and given them a more Christian spin.  
As a society, it is largely peaceful, even kind of idyllic. It’s one admittedly large city-state on quite a small world, one that resembles Terry Pratchett’s Discworld in that it is, in fact, flat, with a sea that seems to run off the edge, with a central mountain and forest region.  
[some nervous laughter]  
I swear to God I am not making this up. I mean… it sounds like I am, but I really am not. The physics alone is kind of mind-boggling and I have not even begun to try and explain it, but I will get there, in the mean time, I guess I can just marvel at it.  
All of these photos will be available to the public and I am donating them to Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, since I feel it’s only appropriate they have it. They got their first… sorta.  
Incidentally, as far as anyone’s aware- I’m the only human, the only ‘mortal’, to have visited Asgard. Ever. Which is… an honour.  
That’s only officially, there has to have been others at some point- but I’m certainly the only one for over a thousand years. In fact, I get the impression that I’m… not entirely welcome in some sectors of the community. From what I can tell, Asgard is a very closed off and secretive place, and with good reason, given how much power they have as a people and a society. They have fought wars with other realms many times before as well as minor skirmishes and smaller campaigns. They see themselves as a kind of beacon and figurehead nation; again, with good reason- if you look at the structure of Yggdrasil, they are on top. They are very much a warrior society, it is ingrained into many aspects of the iconography and culture.  
I’ll come back to that point, but for now I would like to show you a couple of items I got from Asgard, again, with permission, to demonstrate a few of my points.  
[pause whilst Jane reaches behind a podium and retrieves a largish gold ball]  
I mentioned their use of magnetic propulsion and how they seemed to have refined and made it controlled enough to power a huge towering monument, this is that same technology, or magic if you will.  
[Jane tosses the ball up into the air and it hovers and bursts into a strange elliptical pattern of geometric shapes, the crowd gasp and some even stand in their seats. Jane waits until the crowd have calmed down]  
This, if you can believe it, is a child’s toy. I came across one similar whilst wondering around on Asgard. I could hardly believe that such advanced technology would be put into something meant for children.  
[Jane claps and the ball reassembles and falls into her arms]  
But then [puts the ball back behind the podium] but then, I thought, well, how many kids now have games consoles and cell phones that would’ve blown scientists minds only thirty years ago.  
I wanted to show you this because, to Asgard, this isn’t advanced- it’s kids stuff to them. Literally. That’s how far ahead they are. When I first arrived, they sent me to a Healing Room where I was examined on what they called a ‘Soul Forge’- it appeared to be used as a diagnostic tool. But as I was lying there looking at it, and fidgeting like I was at the dentist-  
[laughter]  
Real mature, I know, but as I was looking at it, I saw it to be, in actual fact; a Quantum Field Generator.  
[a few gasps and murmurings]  
A few of you know what that is, but I’ll explain- it’s basically a way of generating a working model of subatomic particles. This ‘Soul Forge’ was able to look at the energy that was present within my body at a subatomic level… They were using it in what was essentially, a hospital.  
[pause for a deep breath]  
To put this in context, the Quantum Field Generator in Cerne, the one set up along side the Hadron Collider? It’s the size of a house. In the Upper East Side.  
[laughter]  
The one I was in was about the size of an MRI machine. If that doesn’t blow your mind then… well… Anyway, I would now like to show you… uh, could you bring the dress in please?  
[a few oohhs and ahhs as a long blue dress with armoured adornments is brought in by a stage hand]  
This is one of the dresses I wore whilst I was in Asgard. Generally women wear quite long gowns and I wanted to blend in, so I was gifted this to wear. I think you’ll agree, it’s… gorgeous! But this is apparently everyday wear for those on Asgard who prefer to wear dresses. Long hair is pretty standard regardless of gender and most citizens, young or old, male or female and everyone in between, will wear a piece of adornment resembling armour. Now, you’ll note that they don’t look as though they have much function as armour and they don’t, because despite their appearance, they are literally just for decoration. The legacy of being a warrior nation is present in even quite domestic touches… so, if it’s not meant to be protection, what’s it made of? Well… oddly enough, it’s made of a vibranium alloy found on Asgard.  
[gasps and murmurs]  
This stuff is stronger than steel and, honestly, I found it a bit heavy to wear at times, but not too much. It was a bit like wearing a very heavy jacket, which I do quite a lot, especially when I go stargazing.  
[Jane knocks the breastplate with her knuckles]  
I want to emphasis that this is not meant for battle before I show you this footage that we shot at an Avengers facility about eight months after Greenwich. I was curious about the metal’s properties and wanted to see how strong it was… uh… can we…? Cool, we’re just showing the footage.  
[We see a shooting gallery with the armour piece held up and Maria Hill aiming a gun directly at it, she fires three shots at it and the bullets bounce off with barely a mark. The crowd gasps and there’s a small amount of commotion]  
See what I mean? This stuff is not meant for protection, just… everyday clothes! It would not stand up to an Asgardian weapon- it’s not indestructible, because it wasn’t designed to be, but it’s still beyond what we would expect on Earth for… well, casual wear!  
The point is, just as the satellite technology that was science fiction over ten years ago is now used in everyday devices; Asgard uses the stuff we would consider to be unbelievably advanced, in the commonplace… um… Oh, God we’re cutting it close… okay...  
I would like to finish up, even though there is so much more I wish I could talk about, but there’s not enough time here and there’s probably not enough time… ever. Really.  
[laughter]  
I have stated that Asgard may hold the key to our advancement and our future within space and expanding our horizons as a species. We have really only just begun, most of us here will not see even advanced missions and exploratory travel between the Realms… hell, maybe it won’t even be our kids, more likely our grandkids or even great grandkids!  
I am lucky in so many ways and privileged to see this amazing world first hand and to experience it. It is through both research, hard work, connection and a large helping of chance that I was able to visit Asgard and get a taste of it and it’s people… but it’s at this point I ought to discuss something… kinda painful… highlighting a huge potential gulf between our species and the Asgardians that we will have to take into account in order to build a mutual, working relationship.  
Their long life spans mean they have a different understanding of time. They measure their days and years like we do, the time frames almost parallel, but crucially- I think they may see and perceive the passage of time differently. Um, sorry, another personal acedote, Darcy told Thor that it was my birthday last year and he just asked ‘Which one?’ Apparently Asgardians do celebrate birthdays… just not all of them, because otherwise it’d be like celebrating your birthday every month. They celebrate certain milestones, in a similar way to coming of age parties and celebrations we have. It… was an awkward conversation let me tell you.  
[laughter]  
I was reminded, to bring up Terry Pratchett again, of the Nomes in his Bromeliad trilogy- they live shorter lives than humans, and being so tiny, they see humans as big, slow moving beasts like elephants, towering above them, and their voices are like the booming, mooing of cows. Now Imagine that… but opposite? To the people of Asgard- we seem to run on triple speed, we seem to live and die like mayflies… it’s hard for them, right now, to see us as a credible allie or even trading partner. The supreme irony is that if you read the Poetic Edda, so much of it consists of men proclaiming that life is short and we should be brave and make good with our lives… these books which tell the stories of a civilisation of long lived, super advanced beings, have the message of making good with what little you have. To Asgard, we are like a lost tribe of Ancient Greeks- sure, we’re quite advanced for our time, we seem to have civilisations and philosophy and our own literature and cultures working… but we’re generations behind them. By the time Earth manages to get close to their level… most of us will likely be dead, and to Asgard that’s… a challenge. We have a lot to prove as a world- we must find a balance between caution and bravery. I have a reputation for throwing myself into danger with no consideration for my own personal safety and I am proud of that reputation… but I still urge caution and common sense when we speak to Asgard as a people. We must advance, but without compassion and understanding of the potential consequences… well. We know what might happen. What has happened. To paraphrase Pratchett yet again, our approach must be- head in the clouds, feet on the ground.  
These times we live in are… strange and exciting, but they come with a price. We have to accept this. I am a science-romantic and an optimist by nature when it comes to the exploration of the Cosmos, but to do that, is to accept it’s sheer size, its scale, its age… and how small you are compared to it. I’m not trying to give everyone an existential crisis, but… we have to at least think about it. Our lives are so short, we need to try and make our impact… we need to try and make a good one.  
Good thing we have some help.  
I would like to end on the words of a science fiction author. He once said he was certain Thor didn’t exist and… well, he was wrong.  
[laughter]  
He also claimed we had no future… again, I think he’s wrong on that one. But he was right about a lot of other things and one particular quote that I think is very relevant to how much we have to look forward to;  
  
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.  
Arthur C Clarke.  
  
Thank you all so much.  
  
[Jane bows to a long, loud standing ovation]


End file.
